Tweets were an apparent attempt to remind the Twitterverse that behind the agency's new social-media facade lies a controversial history. Photo: Larry Downing /Reuters

On Friday, the CIA officially joined Twitter. Somewhat against the generally accepted nature of the agency, its first tweet was coyly playful, saying: “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.”

Not everyone, however, was laughing.

Later the same day, through its own Twitter account, the New York Review of Books released a barrage of 140-character reminders of the surveillance agency's controversial interrogation techniques.

In the blogpost, Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, concludes: “The CIA’s desperate efforts to hide the details of what the world already knows in general outline – that it subjected human beings to brutal treatment to which no human being should ever be subjected – are only the latest evidence of the poisonous consequences of a program euphemistically called ‘enhanced interrogation’.”

Then @nybooks got serious.

In rapid succession, the account tweeted out the contents page of a confidential 2007 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, entitled “Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody”.

The contents page, which documented interrogation tactics used at the CIA's secret offshore prisons known as “black sites”, was published in a 2009 NYRB article by Mark Danner, US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites.

The 10-tweet blast was an apparent attempt to remind the Twitterverse that behind the agency's new social-media facade – and indeed the “kids page” of its website – lies a somewhat controversial history.

As of Saturday afternoon, @CIA had not responded to @nybooks. It had, however, released a second tweet, which said: